- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
So this is something I've been mulling for a while now because I was struggling to understand why the DNC looked at Biden and said "Yeah, him." Not Tulsi and her possible appeal to moderates and women voters, not Bernie and his populist appeal and ability to appease the progressive/demsoc elements, not Steyer because... well let's be real no one gave a shit about Steyer. Biden, and then the seemingly-unpopular Harris as veep. Harris as a choice was itself mildly confusing and I'll get to that in a moment, but Biden? Really?
His mental decline wasn't really super obvious before the campaigning started, I think, so that isn't a factor either way here. Biden has a bit of a history as a gaffe machine, this was noted in passing during his tenure as Obama's veep and those old clips etc. of him saying things that absolutely would not fly today are a thing. Biden is not wholly uncharismatic, I remember an ex-friend saying that he thought Biden would have been a good successor to Obama himself a little while back (which I didn't entirely understand coming from him, he's a straight-up socialist type last I knew) but he's no Bill Clinton, he's not even a Barack Obama. No one I've met in the past who liked Biden could really cite any kind of policy reason for liking him. I didn't think Biden's performance at the Dem debates was stellar or anything, it might just be that the field was enough of a mess that he's the only one who didn't come out of it a complete cipher or covered in shit. The only thing that really sticks in my head for "why Biden?" is possible nostalgia for the Obama years.
I think it's kind of funny that Obama's endorsement of Biden was slow to come and kind of lacking in enthusiasm at least at first, but that honestly might just be because Obama's a bit of a lazy fuck who'd really rather be doing book deals and speaking tours rather than get embroiled in politics AGAIN. When I look at Biden's policy statements going into the election I'm struck by how either strangely noncommittal/waffly he is or how he seems to commit hard to things that I really don't see as being fantastic things to commit hard to. And then we come to the VP choice, Harris - the woman who got fucking PWNED by Tulsi in the debates, the woman who by all reasonable yardsticks should be anathema to a Dem party that has played up things like "systemic racism" very hard for a bit now and isn't even African-American anyway. I don't know if Biden signed off on her or was saddled with her, but the distinction may be moot anyway. It might be that she was the only "woman of color" in the options that wasn't an absolute disaster in the making (see Abrams).
His mental decline wasn't really super obvious before the campaigning started, I think, so that isn't a factor either way here. Biden has a bit of a history as a gaffe machine, this was noted in passing during his tenure as Obama's veep and those old clips etc. of him saying things that absolutely would not fly today are a thing. Biden is not wholly uncharismatic, I remember an ex-friend saying that he thought Biden would have been a good successor to Obama himself a little while back (which I didn't entirely understand coming from him, he's a straight-up socialist type last I knew) but he's no Bill Clinton, he's not even a Barack Obama. No one I've met in the past who liked Biden could really cite any kind of policy reason for liking him. I didn't think Biden's performance at the Dem debates was stellar or anything, it might just be that the field was enough of a mess that he's the only one who didn't come out of it a complete cipher or covered in shit. The only thing that really sticks in my head for "why Biden?" is possible nostalgia for the Obama years.
I think it's kind of funny that Obama's endorsement of Biden was slow to come and kind of lacking in enthusiasm at least at first, but that honestly might just be because Obama's a bit of a lazy fuck who'd really rather be doing book deals and speaking tours rather than get embroiled in politics AGAIN. When I look at Biden's policy statements going into the election I'm struck by how either strangely noncommittal/waffly he is or how he seems to commit hard to things that I really don't see as being fantastic things to commit hard to. And then we come to the VP choice, Harris - the woman who got fucking PWNED by Tulsi in the debates, the woman who by all reasonable yardsticks should be anathema to a Dem party that has played up things like "systemic racism" very hard for a bit now and isn't even African-American anyway. I don't know if Biden signed off on her or was saddled with her, but the distinction may be moot anyway. It might be that she was the only "woman of color" in the options that wasn't an absolute disaster in the making (see Abrams).
